


Moths

by Radiolock



Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: Alternate Universe, Angst, Asexual Sherlock, Asexuality, Depression, Drama, F/M, Family, First Love, Friendship, Gender Issues, Guilt, Heterosexuality, Jealousy, Love Confessions, M/M, Male Homosexuality, Marriage, Mental Breakdown, Multi, Other, POV First Person, Past Relationship(s), Pining, Platonic Relationships, Possessive Behavior, Pre Reichenbach, References to Suicide, Shame, Teacher-Student Relationship, Teenlock, Trust Issues, Unilock, Unrequited Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-03-30
Updated: 2013-03-30
Packaged: 2017-12-06 22:30:31
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,745
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/740881
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Radiolock/pseuds/Radiolock
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sherlock knew he couldn't do it. He couldn't look into the eyes of someone else's child and lie to them. Couldn’t spend his life searching for someone like John. It started in a city. It ended in a town. It ended for John. But not for Sherlock.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Moths

**Author's Note:**

  * Translation into Polski available: [Ćmy](https://archiveofourown.org/works/1189005) by [AliceJJJ23](https://archiveofourown.org/users/AliceJJJ23/pseuds/AliceJJJ23)
  * A translation of [Ćmy](https://archiveofourown.org/works/1189005) by [AliceJJJ23](https://archiveofourown.org/users/AliceJJJ23/pseuds/AliceJJJ23). 



> In Teenage Sherlock's POV.

It started in a city. It ended in a town. It ended for him. But not for me. It burned in our anger and hid as I fell- as I was pushed. It cowered in remembrance and clicked a torch in the back of my skull, searching for a way out. Buried alive, it stayed in rest until the dirt became too cold, the silence too loud.

  
As hands dug out of its grave, I took outreached hands that pulled me up from the ground. Got my trousers dusted off, my shirt straightened, and hair combed. I put down the needle and turned away from the mirror. Finally learned to ignore the numbers, and become painfully aware of the hands ready to shove me down again. I see them everywhere now. All with flesh-colored gloves. It could be anyone. Piles of mud pulled aside as it resurfaced and crawled as I sat alone and read. My body is wrapped in a jacket, I am a turtle. Please stay away from me, don’t come close. I don’t want contact. Years of lies revealed are enough, no surprises please. Please stay away from me. Please. Please. Please.

  
It’s not as if I believe I can no longer love, it’s that I no longer want to. He asks and I tell him no. He laughs and shakes his head, says I will find someone one day. I violently disagree, I want to stomp my foot. I want to stop moving. I want him to stop moving. I told you I can’t. I can’t. I can’t. I can’t. I don’t want it. My lips and tongue burn with the sensation of even speaking those affectionate words to a future ‘someone’. I cannot. I will not. I won’t. It would kill me.

  
It didn’t start again in the city, but on the ride home. His head on my shoulders. The scent of fruit. My eyes opening to find my lips rested on his head. I wanted to kiss his head. I wanted to kiss him. And as I listened to a familiar voice telling me it’s all right, it’s all wrong, I kept my eyes away from him. His head moved away, my shoulder empty and heart broken. I then waited, hours passing as excitement racked me each time he fell back to me then dissipated as he leaned away. I stole one look at him and it resurfaced. It moved back to the front of my mind in flourish. No. Please no. But I couldn’t look away. I stared at his lips, his closed eyelids, he’s…perfect in every way. The moisture at the rims of my eyes pulled my pupils away again. I couldn’t. I wanted to but I can’t. It ended for him, but not for me.

  
He loved her- this woman he had always loved before the city and even more after he set himself free. He was straight. He was very straight- reminding me almost every day from the moment we separated. He is my best friend. I nod and I agree to his stories of her. I talk to him about women, about marriage, about sex, love, his happiness with women. And his pain- his enslavement to the woman much older than him. A woman with a very kind soul, her tiny hands held out to me as well when I was fallen. I respected her. When he told me he loved her, I congratulated him. I clapped his back and promised to help him with the love of his life.

  
He loved her before the city. During his time with me. He’s told her in the past about our relationship and how it ended. It’s a just thing we’re supposed to laugh about now. So I laugh with him and agree. Nod and agree. He says it was just a couple of months, just a thing we shared when he explained it to her. He laughed when she had asked about it, why he had never gone back to boys and tells her not to question his sexuality. He was straight. He liked women. I was just a thing.

  
I still think about him and those nights I spent staying up just to get his five-second call. The conversation we had, the excitement in both of our throats when we talked about our futures in school hallways. His face in the sun as we laid in the grassy fields behind my house. Planning to surprise our friends, writing letters of new love, my heart quickening each time I checked for his name in my unread inbox. There are many songs that he loves that make me think of him when I listen to them now. I wanted to delete the letters and homemade presents but there still with me. In drawers and small boxes, those memories remain buried. Because it ended for him, and so it must end for me.

  
He tells me about her mixed signs, her push and pull of him each day. How he loves her madly but knows her position will never let her return his feelings. I hear about his frustration and try to support him. No, not try even, I actually did support him. I didn’t realize until the ride home, how I had been staring at him. Isolating him, and amplifying him as I pushed the others away. I didn’t notice until now how badly I wanted to kiss him that night or again in the silence of our ride home. For him it was just a thing, just a couple of months. For me, it was my first real love. It was feeling alive every single day and willing to give anything to simply melt into him and be surrounded by the most perfect thing I had ever seen. I love him. I love him. I love him.

  
People are monsters with masks. That I know and will never forget. It has always happened to me. Every time is another surprise from other mouth: _I never loved you and I never will. I can’t do this. I’ve always hated you. I saw you as a freak. You don’t know when to shut up, do you? There will never be anything special about you. I was sorry for you. I pitied you. I hate you. Never speak to me again. I only did it because I felt sorry. No one likes you and no one will ever care about you either. Stay away from me. I was disgusted by you. I pretended you were someone else. You’re nothing. I don’t even know why you’re still alive, no one would care._

  
I hate women; feel repulsed by their bodies and faces. I hate their voices, their curves, every attribute in them that makes them different from me. I hate every single one of them. I hate her. I hate speaking about them with him, lying. The idea that I will one day have to marry one to have children. I hate them for stealing from me. No, not stealing. For being what he wants. It’s their fault for everything. Or is it my fault? Should I have never reminded him of my anatomy?

  
I want to be one of them. It physically hurts how much I do, just so he could look at me in the same light. So that one day we could have gotten married, had a family. So that I would have actually had a child with his eyes and lips smiling back at me. Hold a child of a spouse I would actually love. I’d be who he’d want. I’d be one of them, the second type of human that actually holds his attention. It would be okay then. But with that small part of me, in this real world, it’s still too big of a difference for him. Instead I will hold a child with a mixture of my own and someone else’s features. A woman’s features. And I will pretend to be happy, raise a glass of champagne with her at our wedding, dance and hold her, kiss her and sleep with her. I will live like a normal person should. I will have children and raise them in a proper family. I’ll call him and ask about his wife and kids. I will kiss my son goodnight and tell him how I met his mother in a library and how she had the same weird tastes and quirks as me. I will tell him about how we just instantly clicked, how beautiful she looked, and how proud I was when he was born. I’ll tell my son how much I love my wife more than anything in the world. Never about how it started in a city and again in a bus. Because it would have ended for him a long time ago. It was just a couple of months. Just a couple of months.

  
He won’t be married to that woman he always talks about but someone who he deserves. A lucky woman with curves and a soft voice will catch him one day and make him hers. They will kiss and dance and sleep together. He’ll pop the champagne I bought for their wedding day and they’ll drink merrily. I’ll clap with the crowd, lips straining from ear to ear as old friends tell embarrassing stories of him during our tenth year. I’ll pat his shoulder and leave early, telling him I have work in the morning. Keeping my smile painted on until my cheeks hurt before I collapse back home on my bathroom floor and scream.

  
That smell of fruit, my lips against his hair. I really wanted to kiss him. I wanted to hold him. I wanted his head to fall back onto my shoulder but it kept moving away. I wanted those late calls again, the letters, the moments I took for granted, those five months back. I want the songs he loves to have meaning again. I want to have meaning in his mind again.

  
I wish… he wouldn’t tell people no one would ever kiss him, that he never had a girlfriend, that no one ever liked him. I wish I wasn’t a ditch to skip in our conversations of the past. I wish he didn’t have to remind me that he was straight every day or how he’s loved the older woman for years even during our relationship. I wish he respected it more. I wish a lot, it’s selfish really. Part of me understands him. Before, I never knew I could love a man. It wasn’t right. The men I had dated in the past never counted, the only relationship I ever acknowledged was with my first girlfriend. It wasn’t until he appeared that I realized it was wrong to deny those men. They loved me, felt connected with me in a real, romantic way that I couldn’t brush off. But I only realized that afterwards. It’s probably something he will never find necessary to grasp. Because it’s women. Just women. Hot women. Cute women. That woman. Their curves and lips. Straight relationships. Straight sex. Straight love.

  
It makes me feel wrong. I hate women also for that- luring him in that path. The right path. The normal path. Reminding me how wrong it would be, how permanent this universe is, and how different everything would be if I was one of them. They’ll always remind me how unhappy I’ll always be because I could never be what he wanted. What he desires.

  
I find no attraction in either men or women. They’re all monsters in masks, many better concealed than others. My body harshly rejects them all. I want to hide in my jacket. I don’t want them to touch me. I want them all to stay away. They’re all surprises. I’m a child with an army of jack-in-the-boxes ready to spring in unison. I can’t take it anymore but I have to do it. I have to do it. I must. I must. I will hold the baby of a stranger when I grow up and look him in the eyes each day and tell lies. I will force myself to walk one day out of my chair reading alone and talk to the woman I’ll marry. I’ll connect with her, shape her out in every way. Find every obsession, quirk, and habit that I attract to. Everything I recognized in the city that made me miss him will be sought out in her. I will place the ring over her finger and tell her I do. I will live in parallelism. I’ll live the way this universe intends me to live.

  
Because it ended for him. But not for me. I spent the day with him and told him he was the only one I’d ever love. He told me about her and how her position will never let him get what he wants. I nodded and to my horror, grew envy. His love would never be met because of her authority, and mine would never be met because of his preference. He would be hurt then led by the woman until they part ways, while I’ll never leave him. I’ll always see him, eyes forced to look at him as we talk casually while I fight the unfair urges relentless to go away. We walked today and as he talked I felt my heart crush inward. My brain throbbed as I kept it inside, listened to his love for her and women and how he’s straight, straight, straight and remembered how in another universe I’d be holding his child and kissing him and how it would be okay, finally be okay for him to love me back and he could forget about her constantly hurting him and with one simple change how happy I would have been.

  
So I grabbed a book and I read, dove into someone else’s words and it all went away. I talked to him in distraction, the black ink diverting my eyes from his as I stuck my nose inside the pages. I managed for several more hours before I finally left him and went home. There was nothing more that I wanted to do than escape reality. Fall into my dreams and never wake up. Imagine everything I wanted to; live in the world that I wanted to be behind the darkness of closed eyelids.

  
I came home and dropped my books and ran to the bathroom and locked it. Shedding all of my clothing and turning on the water, I laid against the cold porcelain. Tears rolling down my cheeks, I closed my eyes and saw our son. My hands reached out and cradled the baby with his lips and eyes as I talked about his father. How it all started in a city and never ended. I told him how I love my husband more than anything than the world- bouncing at each word. The bathwater reached past my ears, and I kept still. I popped the champagne for our wedding day and laughed at the image of my hand shaking as he placed a ring over it. Sound left me as water rushed inside my ears and eventually my nose. Waves from the faucet slid the tear tracks from my cheeks, kissing my eyelids before devouring me whole.

  
I saw his head on my shoulder and could smell the fruit. I gathered the courage to press my lips against the soft hair, and kept my eyes on him as a familiar voice told me it’s all right, it’s all wrong. I opened my eyes underneath the water. Then my mouth.

  
I didn’t scream. I let the liquid fill me up completely. Because I knew I couldn’t do it, I couldn’t look into the eyes of someone’s child and lie to them. Couldn’t spend my life searching for someone like him. Marrying someone with curves and lips I wished I had and live in parallelism. Couldn’t congratulate his wedding day; photograph him slipping that ring on her finger, and run away to cry in my bathroom and wish things were different.

  
My mind finally let go, the darkness slipping through the panic and bringing finally… peace.

  
My graying irises peer through the water overflowing the bathtub and flooding the floor.

  
It started in a city.

  
And ended in an alternate world.

 

It ended for him. But not for me.


End file.
